Florida colleges to drop remedial classes for thousands

For years, men and women wanting to take classes at their local community colleges have been discouraged to learn they must complete a remedial program before enrolling in college-level courses.

Almost 200,000 students, including recent high-school graduates, had to take refresher classes in math, reading or writing last school year. Some needed extra help in all three subjects, adding a semester or two or more — and hundreds of dollars in tuition — onto their educational plans.

It's a situation that has prompted numerous students to drop out before they ever enroll in their first college-level course.

Educators and lawmakers have long agreed the system needs revamping, considering colleges statewide pay tens of millions of dollars a year for a program with dismal results. Nationally, fewer than 1 in 10 students who started in remediation graduate from community colleges within three years, according to one estimate. Recent reliable data for Florida students were not immediately available, but old figures show it's just as bad.

Now, amid an outcry for nationwide reforms in remedial education, Florida lawmakers have ordered a complete overhaul of the state's college remedial programs. While some researchers praise the legislation, which Gov. Rick Scott recently signed into law, college administrators fear that students are being set up to fail.

Starting in 2014, a large segment of students will be able to immediately enroll in college-level courses, regardless of their academic abilities. They will not have to take remedial courses or even a placement test, which is required by community colleges to detect gaps in learning.

The goal is to allow more students to start earning college credits — most remedial courses do not carry credit — and study fields that interest them while also offering them "support" services such as tutoring. This way, state officials said, they can move more quickly toward a degree while simultaneously bridging any learning gaps.

The changes focus primarily on the state's 28 community colleges. Only one public university — Florida A&M University in Tallahassee — is allowed to offer remedial classes, which also are referred to as "developmental education" or "college prep" classes.

"It is no longer a one-size-fits-all system," said Randy Hanna, chancellor of the Division of Florida Colleges. "Our goal is to get people successfully out of developmental-ed courses and receiving a degree and moving on to a university or moving on to a job as soon as possible. This legislation will give us the flexibility that we need."

The exemption applies to active-duty members of all branches of the U.S. armed services and anyone who entered a Florida public school as a ninth-grader in 2003-04 or later and who also has a standard Florida high-school diploma.

Those who take do remedial courses starting in 2014 will be given more options for getting help getting on track, including remedial classes with accelerated schedules. Colleges must submit plans for restructuring their programs to the state by March and make those changes by fall 2014.

Schools also will begin using a wider variety of diagnostic tools to determine who is college-ready. They might, for example, consider work experience and high-school grade-point averages in addition to placement-test results. That alone likely will result in fewer students in remedial programs.

Though a lot of students will like being able to opt out of remedial work, college administrators such as Karen Borglum of Valencia College worry that students will struggle or fail their college-level classes if they lack skills and don't take advantage of opportunities to get help.

Research shows a lot of students overestimate their abilities. If they fail courses because they misjudged their skill level, it could be discouraging. Some students might drop out because of that, explained Borglum, Valencia's assistant vice president for curriculum and articulation.

And bad grades would hurt students' GPAs and their eligibility for financial aid.

Although students can retake courses, that gets expensive. After failing a class twice, the cost of taking it again more than triples because Floridians are then charged regular tuition rates instead of a discounted rate for state residents.

"Students are going to be expected to really understand the consequences of their choices," Borglum said.

Cobb had been out of school for more than 20 years when she decided to fulfill a lifelong goal of going to college. A placement test in 2010 told her she was deficient in math and needed two remedial courses to get up to speed.